Marijuana Business Magazine February 2020

Marijuana Business Magazine | February 2020 34 Illinois Licensed marijuana retailers brought in about $11 million during the first week of state-legal recreational sales. The demand proved so extreme that some retailers had to cut off sales to adult-use customers in order to conserve inventory for medical patients. “The demand in Illinois is every bit as large as anyone could have suspected,” said Zachary Zises, owner of Dispensary 33 in north Chicago. Zises was among a handful of independent marijuana shop owners that made the difficult decision to stop serving recreational cannabis customers. He estimated that decision cost him $100,000 each day he had to turn away recreational buyers. “These problems were all anticipated,” Jeremy Unruh, PharmaCann’s general counsel and chief compliance officer, said of the hiccups surrounding rec sales in Illinois. “They’re issues that will abate.” Iowa A medical marijuana board approved post-traumatic stress disorder and intellectual disability with aggression as conditions allowed to be treated with MMJ, moves that should boost Iowa’s relatively small market. The Iowa Board of Medicine must agree to the qualifying conditions before medical providers can write MMJ prescriptions for patients with these conditions. While approving two conditions, the Iowa Medical Cannabidiol Board voted to reject two others that could have boosted sales even more: opioid dependency and Alzheimer’s dis- ease. Board members expressed concern over lack of studies or other evidence that medical marijuana would help those conditions. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said legalizing medical marijuana is one of her top priorities in 2020. The Republican said that while she is not a proponent of legalizing recre- ational marijuana, she would likely sign an MMJ bill into law. Kansas might be spurred to legalize marijuana sales in some form because it is bordered on three of its four sides by states with legal cannabis markets. Maine The rollout of adult-use cannabis sales in Maine is being threatened by a lack of testing facilities, according to regulators. As of late December, only one lab had applied to be certified as a testing facility. Maine officials are hopeful they’ll receive more applications but acknowledge the shortage of labs could slow retail sales of recreational marijuana. In other news, Florida-based Metrc is in talks to provide seed-to-sale tracking for medical and recreational cannabis in Maine. Industry Developments | International & State